†‡† (or: rrritualzzz)

If the whole WU LYF phenomenon proves anything, it’s that we all still go mad for a little bit of mystery. As usual, though, anything that the UK is doing, America is trying to do it bigger and better. And so, whilst we may have a band that are near impossible to get to the bottom of, they’ve taken the unnatural step of creating a whole new wave of bands who have names that pretty much made searching the web redundant. If you ask google to look for †‡†, it tells you that there are no documents that match your query. And in these blindspots, Witch House is taking residence, making up a little underground scene of it’s own, online.

After a little hassle, it’s not too difficult to find out that †‡† are essentially called rrritualzzz. A recent interview with keyboard is drunk made it seem like it’s the project of one man who, as you’d expect, is evasive of most questioning. Whilst Witch House has a ready made set of characteristics ripe for parody once it suffers the widespread backlash that chillwave appears to be in the middle of, this is one of the acts that should be able to weather the storm. Naturally, the music is dark and atmospheric, just like everything else in the genre, but it’s not been backed with the anthemic qualities on show here. You’ve got to be confident if you’re willing to sample Ain’t no mountain high enough, but on >>>>▲<<<< rrrituallzzz manages it, turning the Motown classic into a ghostly vehicle for loud, thumping electronica. Unlike the works of most bedroom producers, the track released so far sound ready made to be pumped out to thousands of people – whether or not the clubs of Ibiza are ready for anything quite so influenced by drone is another question entirely, though. An EP is supposedly on the way, presumably on the CD-R’s that Disaro distributes everything else on.